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Also also, half the fun of the game is not knowing what's in your opponent's deck (particularly not knowing what surprises the corp has up its sleeve). I rather dislike playing against my own decks, since I know all the cards in them...

If what you want is variety and a breath of fresh air in your games, the expansions will certainly cover both. Perhaps some expansions more than other. For example, trace amount is about to revolutionize Jinteki.

Note that there is very little power creep. Old ICE and ICE breakers don't just get replaced by new ones for example. Instead, you now wonder which you should include in which type of decks.

That said, some new cards can sometimes open new combos that can sometimes be rather powerful. So rather than specific types of cards getting stronger (ICE, events, etc) it is the strategies that get weak or stronger as the new influx of cards change the "meta".

This certainly bring variety and a sense of freshness to your game. However, like others have said, it's impossible to use the expansion unless you deck build.

What I would do if I was only interested in casual play, is use the expansion packs to be make 1 deck of each faction that doesn't need cards from other decks. This will allow for less time removing/re-adding cards from deck to deck when one wants to play something different.

Netrunner is the kind of game where player skill plays a much more important role than a few slightly better cards in one's deck. Sure, you may need to deckbuild a bit to make those decks (i.e. don't put 2 spinal modems if you don't have a lot of link cards in the deck), but after that you can let the decks sit as they are, until a new expansion comes out and you decide to build even more decks for variety.

That's a nice idea, but it's not actually possible right now, unless he has more than one core set. With just WLA and one core set you can't actually build more than 2 Corp decks before you run out of agendas. And one of them has to be NBN. (HB, Jinteki, and Weyland each have 12 points of in-faction agendas, NBN has 18. There are 15 points of neutral agendas, and you need 20 to make a deck. Trace Amount or a second core set lets you do it. You'd still be strained for economy in all four decks though.

There's some pretty easy substitutions to make to incorporate WLA cards into the base decks without having to really deckbuild, and doing so streamlines the decks a little bit, while also bringing the Corp deck totals up to a preferred 49 cards.

Like any other game, it all depends on how much you enjoy the game, and how much you've already played the core set. I don't think it's a good idea to play the core once or twice, and then just run out and buy expansions. You should get a good feel for the core before you start building decks. Moreover, playing the core set is a different experience from playing with the core + expansions (pre-constructed vs. constructed).

Since you've said you're not much into deck-building, but you want variety, I suggest picking up What Lies Ahead, and seeing how it works for you. If it doesn't work out for you, then you've only spent $15.